Tim
Burton's Planet of the Apes had me rooting for the apes. I know,
the apes on this Planet are the bad guys. They're aggressive, belligerent
and tyrannical. They beat on each other a lot in a rollicking sort of
Primate Fight Club of the Jungle. And they viciously dominate the poor,
weak, fangless humans, here in this upside-down universe where apes are
in charge, and people are treated like animals (yes, like the original).

But
these apes don't often fight to kill. Their weapons are their own natural
strength, agility, and those nasty gnashing teeth that would make Dracula
jade with envy. When it comes to using their own brute power, they're
totally without restraint. They use a few spears and swords here and there,
yet they shun the mighty weapon that so many humans embrace--the gun--as
"too dangerous." Their paw-to-claw combat is ferocious, but
infinitely less destructive than human guns and bombs.

So,
though I abhor violence, I sympathize with the underlying motive for
the apes' forceful domination of the humans. Yes, they hunt humans like
game, and the ape kids enjoy keeping human children as pets.

Paul Giamatti
as an Orangutan Trader in Human Slaves

Though,
as Limbo, the human slave trader, comically portrayed as a slouchy,
borsht-belt orangutan by Paul Giamatti, warns an upper-class chimp
family purchasing a human baby girl as a pet, "Be sure to get
rid of her before puberty. One thing you don't want in your house
is a human teenager."

Yes,
they're ruthless and casually cruel. But that's, in part, because the
elders know and the others sense that if they give an inch, the hapless
humans will seize power and will, in due time, kill most of them off
and put the rest behind bars.

Tim Roth as
General Thade nabs a human who's been out in the sun too long

In
other words, they will be in the abysmal shape that most Great Apes
are in now: highly endangered, hunted and eaten as bushmeat by humans,
or captured, caged, ogled in zoos, abused in circuses, studied in
primate centers, used as guinea pigs in often deadly experiments,
their babies sold as pets, only to be abandoned as adults (since,
as any ape expert knows, one thing you don't want in your house
is a teenage ape!). Why wouldn't-and why shouldn't-they fight fang-and-paw
to maintain their precarious position of power and safety?

At least the apes on this Planet don't eat the humans.

Another
reason I rooted for the apes on Burton's Planet is because they're
much more interesting than the humans. Better makeup, better acting,
better lines; I'll bet they were even given better food by Craft Services.
All of the human actors are mind-numbingly dull, with the exception
of Kris Kristofferson (as the wild-haired, feral-eyed Karubi) who is
just plain silly.

The
dullest of dull humans is the star. Mark Wahlberg plays the stoic heroic
Captain Leo Davidson who trains genetically enhanced chimps at a space
station.

Mark Wahlberg
looking determined as Captain Leo Davidson

In
the first few minutes of the film, Captain Leo disobeys orders and
impulsively flies a space pod into an electrical storm through a
time warp, then crash-lands into a lake in a rain forest on this
planet where apes rule and humans run. Wahlberg acts like being
boring is a virtue. He seems capable of only four facial expressions--anger,
surprise, determination and blank. And he's not even wearing three
pounds of latex and fake hair on his face.

As
for his body, well, we don't get to see much of it this time around,
thanks to the actor's born-again modesty. Here is a guy who attained
fame in his underwear, then doubled his money playing a porn star. Now
he's "worried about the possibility of having to wear a loincloth,"
according to the program notes. What a priss! Is he getting soft around
the middle, or just trying to appeal to Dr.
Laura fans?

Wahlberg's
prima donna prudery makes Charleton Heston, who wore his loincloth with
pride in the original 1968 Planet of the Apes, seem downright
bohemian. By the way, one of the funniest scenes in Burton's Planet
features Heston in an unbilled cameo, playing a dying chimp chieftain,
spoofing his real-life role as president of the National Rifle Association
by delivering a passionate anti-gun message against this hazardous human
invention. Of course, he's in the only ape in Ape City to actually own
a gun.

But
back to the flesh, and baring it. This is a story, in part, about humans
being treated like animals.

A barechested Charleton
Heston (what an animal!) flanked by the ape-masked Roddy McDowall and
sultry Linda Harrison in the original Planet of the Apes

Animals generally don't wear clothes. Nudity, or semi-nudity, enhances vulnerability.
In the original Planet, Heston, a Republican, wasn't afraid to show
his chest, abs and a nice piece of tush, even when he was over 40.

Wahlberg
shows nothing-body, mind or soul. His distressed spacesuit covers almost
every inch of skin, and his lack of character development reveals little
interior life. I'd have to agree with simian Sadist-in-Chief General
Thade, played with fantastic menace and beastly grace by Tim Roth, when
he pulls Captain Leo's head down on his lap at a dinner party, stretches
open his mouth, looks inside and rasps "Is there a soul in there?
I don't see a soul." Neither do I. That's why I'm rooting for the
apes.

This
is partly the fault of the script, committee-written by William Broyles,
Jr., Lawrence Konner and Mark Rosenthal, plus a couple of uncredited chimpanzees,
I imagine. Even for a brainless summer blockbuster, the lines are pretty
lame. The original Planet may have been corny, but this dialogue,
especially the stuff the humans have to say ("Never send a monkey
to do a man's job"), is just plain lazy.

The
other principle human is played by another model-turned-actor: the athletically
gorgeous, bee-stung-lipped Estella Warren is Daena the hunted warrior
woman.

Warren's
another one who, having already posed nude in various advertising campaigns
to break into Celebrityville, has decided not to go bare--or even skimpy--now
that she's on the cusp of movie stardom. What a waste! What a crass career
move. And what a horrible outfit it has spawned!

Delicious Daena
(Estella Warren)

Clothed
in glittery rags reminiscent of Raquel Welch in One Million Years
BC, but much more conservative and verging on dumpy, Warren appears
lost most of the time--not on the Planet, in the movie. The way
she delivers her uninspired lines, she would have been much better off
in the 1968 version where the humans couldn't speak at all. But hey,
she's got luscious lips and great gams. A fine specimen of a female
human. If she were cooked up just right, I'd eat her.

The
rest of the human species, a motley horde of extras hightailing through
the rain forest, cowering in cages or milling directionlessly about
in the sand, are so ludicrous, they're hardly worth saving. I wouldn't
have minded a bit if, in the end, they were all caged up again. Also,
the fact that they can speak (unlike the original where they can't)
makes the whole premise pretty illogical. If the humans can talk to
each other, organize, develop technology and have opposable thumbs,
how come the apes are able to maintain dominance? That's just one of
the many things that don't make sense--even sci-fi sense--about Burton's
Planet.

Captain Leo among
the scraggly humans

But
back to the apes. I just go ape over those apes! But then, I always
have. Especially imaginary human-ape hybrids that take that 98% genetic
similarity which real chimps have to humans, and turn it up to 99.8%.
My long-time favorite was big old King Kong who loved Fay Wray
with a passion that scaled the Empire State Building. Even at the age
of five, when I first saw the King on the tube, I knew I wanted a lover
who lusted for me like a big powerful animal. I couldn't sleep a wink
that night, fearing and half-hoping that King Kong's huge hairy hand
would come reaching into my bedroom window for my irresistible pajama-clad
self, spiriting me away to the jungle to play mysterious animalistic
games. The next morning, I drew a secret series of cartoons of a giant
hairy King Kong capturing and caressing a tiny, smiling Fay Wray. This
was my first venture into comic erotica. I never showed anyone. When
my brother found it, I freaked. We both knew it was porn. Ape porn.

King Kong & Fay
Wray: Interspecies Love & Torment

I
liked the original Planet of the Apes apes too, though they didn't
seem so sexy to me. But they were a bit more believable than the mechanical,
stop-action Kong doll. The masks were pretty realistic (for the time),
but they didn't move, and the actors didn't walk like apes, so though
their dialogue resonated resoundingly with the civil rights and anti-war
battles of 1968, their physicality didn't quite satisfy.

The
apes on Burton's Planet take the whole unnerving but compelling
fantasy of the Ape-Human Hybrid a great leap forward. Burton wanted
his apes to be "80% human, 20% ape," and his cast has, for
the most part, attained that balance. The magic begins with their make-up,
extraordinarily lifelike latex masks created by six-time Oscar winner
Rick Baker, which move with every inch of the actors' faces to express
even the subtlest emotions.

But
their apishness is not only skin-deep. An integral part of Burton's
vision involved sending the actors to Ape School (which sounds like
a place I'd like to study!), where instructors like former Cirque de
Soleil performer Terry Notary taught them how to ape the apes. In hyper-physical,
Commedia dell'Arte fashion, actors learned to sniff and snarl,
slink and lope, and generally get in touch with their Inner Ape.